Monthly Archive: November 2016

Word-of-mouth and published reviews are good ways to find out about new books of interest. Word-of-mouth is probably the best because you can judge the passion and the source then decide if you’ll buy based on what you’ve heard. Increasingly, published book reviews are untrustworthy. Not because some editor chooses the wrong titles, but because reviewers don’t take the assignment seriously. Here’s an example from last Saturday’s Globe and Mail. Zadie Smith’s new novel, Swing Time, was clearly the pick of the week. It takes up a full page with a photo of the author and a four-column review. But the first quarter of...

Mystical Landscapes, a special exhibit currently at the Art Gallery of Ontario, opens with a trumpet fanfare. Three paintings by Paul Gauguin, all circa 1890 before he fled for the debauchery of the South Pacific, are displayed like a medieval tryptic. Gauguin painted them to be hung together but this is the first time the artist’s wish has been achieved. They include Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, The Yellow Christ and Christ in the Garden of Olives, usually hanging in Edinburgh, Buffalo and West Palm Beach respectively. The rest of the exhibit of 90 paintings and 20 drawings is equally compelling and includes two...

I don’t like Donald Trump any more than anyone else, but I think we should all follow Barack Obama’s lead and give the president-elect some time and space. Forget about the early White House appointments and what they might signal. And don’t fret about the bond market losing $1 trillion in a matter of a few days. The traders are just sending Trump a signal not to count on spending whatever he wants on infrastructure. An inflationary economy is a bad idea. Nor should we worry overly about rowdy demonstrations and police with assault rifles at the ready. This is nothing compared to 1968...

Ontario Minister of Transportation Steven Del Duca wrote me a letter recently to say that I’d been chosen at random for a traffic survey. I was delighted to participate. After the weather, traffic is the number one topic of conversation in Toronto. The survey was straightforward. They designated a specific day and asked where I went and how I traveled. In my case, it was simple: a three-point trip by subway downtown to the Toronto-Dominion Centre, on to Yonge and St. Clair, and then home. Hard to imagine what they learned from that. In fact it’s hard to imagine what they’ve...